


Pride Goeth Before The Fall

by dorothy_notgale, Tromperie



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Asexual Relationship, Fake Dating, M/M, Not the sin the march, Pride, book canon timeline, just talk to one another, not miniseries compliant, the 80s, these beings are dumb
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-20
Updated: 2019-06-20
Packaged: 2020-05-15 06:11:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19289800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dorothy_notgale/pseuds/dorothy_notgale, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tromperie/pseuds/Tromperie
Summary: Crowley has been flaunting his relationship with Aziraphale for ages, just to annoy bigots.In June of 1986, staring down the barrel of the Apocalypse, Aziraphale gets tired of the charade.





	Pride Goeth Before The Fall

**Author's Note:**

> This is the softest thing we've ever written. Timeline may be _very slightly_ fudged just to make the Queen reference work with everything else that's going on, but Crowley has demonic powers so...

It shouldn’t bother Aziraphale. He knew perfectly well that it shouldn’t, because Crowley did it to annoy bigots, which was practically a good deed all of its own regardless of intent.

And yet, when the being with whom he’d spent 6000 years on Earth pressed a hand to the small of his back and ushered him through a doorway, it made him--just a touch uneasy.

It was a sin to lie, he settled on first, when Crowley would beam smugly across the park from their usual place, twiddling his fingers in a solicitous little wave. They weren’t intimately involved, not in the way humans were.

“We could be,” Crowley had said, in one of his attempts to be shocking. It carried off far less often than he thought it did.

“But we aren’t.” He knew that Crowley had grown bored with intercourse in a few centuries, but Aziraphale had never had the taste at all. Not with mortals. It just felt unfair to the poor things, there and gone before he could properly explain anything. And the idea of taking up with one of the Nephilim simply… it hadn’t borne thinking about. The only one who really understood his position, who might bear thinking about in some purely conceptual manner, was Crowley. And they didn’t.

“Yeah, but we _could_ ,” Crowley insisted stubbornly. “Lots of humans out there that don’t even if they could, and they’re still getting bricks thrown through their windows. So it’s not a lie, is it.”

It sometimes seemed as though the only true talent afforded to demons was the ability to speak until their opponent simply could not be arsed to keep the discussion going, which rather explained Saint Beryl. Crowley had laughed when he said so, and that had been its own sort of impossible. And a bit endearing.

It was unfair, he tried next. “Really, my dear,” (Crowley had given him a thumbs up, and he scowled), “surely you know that if some ghastly ruffian can’t take their violence out on us, they’ll go elsewhere. To someone who can’t simply put in a requisition.”

“Demon.” It was such a paper-thin defense, shamelessly outdated, that Crowley went on even without a scolding. “That’s the thing about little evils, sometimes they rebound on the bastard who deserves it. Lot of nasty little accidents everyday, big city like this. Who’s to say.”

It wasn’t too much of a problem, aside of the times they were nearly arrested, of course. Aziraphale tried not to worry too much about where the policemen went; it was just one of those demon _things_ one couldn’t quite count as a miracle. And after 1967, that generally slowed down, too (though the Bentley accumulated significantly more parking tickets than any of the surrounding cars.)

Crowley always made the little charade worth his while, was the hell of it. Treated for dinner, or tickets to the theater--not that money meant much to their kind, but it was nice to avoid the hassle. The very least he could do on such occasions was tolerate having his chair pulled out and a peck on the cheek, waft of aftershave and sandalwood shampoo lingering.

There was something a bit nice, too, about the spectacle of it; as much as they tried to pass unnoticed through the lives of God’s short-lived children, this made them momentarily visible.

At first it seemed always to be negative attention, but over time he began to see something different in some of the looks they garnered, a shy and seeking sort of recognition darting from beneath fragile human brows. Boys and girls and people of all sorts, seeing them together and relaxing minutely wherever they were.

_Be a funny thing…_

It was almost infuriating how often Crowley had one eye on the future, sometimes without even seeming to realize it himself. If nothing else, it certainly made an argument for the Ineffable Plan (he’d never say as much, of course; the demon would be absolutely horrified to think that he’d done something divinely right). It made him feel...not quite useless. A little lost. A little in awe. A little… fond.

“I just don’t think it’s necessary.” He adjusted the fit of his suspenders, pleased to see that his choice of fashion had come back into style in the little club that Crowley had chosen for them. Though the leather was a bit much. “You did see the parade, didn’t you? I thought it was rather sweet.”

“You would.” Demons were required to smirk, but at times--when the lighting was dim, and he thought no one was looking--Crowley could manage something very like a smile. “I don’t like it.”

“It was your suggestion!” The whole ridiculous charade, and the Arrangement before that (perhaps, who could remember, it was really… ).

“Not that.” Crowley knocked back a noxious green drink, grumbling about false advertisement. He’d been on edge since they’d hatched their little plot. “The disease.”

“…Oh.” It was expected, he was meant to say now. The end of the world needed a plague or two, it was part of what made it apocalyptic. He downed his own drink. “Yes.”

Crowley waited, quiet and expectant, and that almost hurt more--that Crowley was looking to him to make sense of these things still, when he knew Aziraphale’s hands and words were bound, or should be.

(He’d been slipping the ties for centuries. Maybe since the Beginning. Since he realized with too little horror that there was sense at the tip of a forked tongue; sometimes he wondered where the edge of the Pit was.)

Crowley’s hands, marvelously made, fussed with a bit of cloth he’d snatched during the parade, rotating it on the bartop.

“I thought you hated rainbows,” Aziraphale said almost too softly to be heard in the din.

“Not much of a promise, is it? I won’t do this _one thing_ again--but there’s so many other ways. Like that.” He twirled the little flag like a baton and tucked it behind his ear. “Well, it’s mine now. He can’t do anything about it.”

“It’s lovely.” Truth be told, he hardly saw the bright colors; too busy staring at his friend’s lean, familiar features, the Ray-Bans that covered softness that shouldn’t be. He felt, rather than saw, the moment when Crowley’s gaze met his own.

“Incredible, aren’t they?” He jerked his head toward the press of bodies, gaze still fixed. “They see anything meant to tear them down, they take it for a weapon. My kind of crowd.”

“Yes. Incredible.” He spoke so softly no human ears could have heard, even without the din. He wasn’t so hurt by the death, he couldn’t say. They all died so quickly, and often in such pain. It was so wretched, the whole bloody thing, that one couldn’t begin to feel the magnitude of grief appropriate. But Crowley was a creature made with eyes at ground level, marveling at humanity’s rebellious tenacity, and whenever he looked up and noticed the forest it was like a fresh stab to his chest. Aziraphale’s heart seized.

“Let’s get out of here.” Crowley lined the last of his glasses up across their suspiciously spacious table. “Drinks are watery as piss.”

“There’s a ’58 at the shop,” he offered without thinking.

“Nineteen?”

“Eighteen. I, er, rather forgot it was down there.” He did desperately want to be drunk at the moment.

Crowley laughed, the sound too low for an audience but the smile too intimate to be sincere. _I hate this_ , Aziraphale thought suddenly and desperately. _I absolutely cannot stand it another second_.

“Stop it,” he whispered, slapping away the hand Crowley had extended to help him up. “It’s too much.”

“What?” Crowley was blinking behind his shades. Aziraphale shouldn’t have been able to know that.

“Just--you--everything.”

“You all right, Angel?”

It was what he was, but it was also part of the show, part of the damned game, and it stung when paired with his friend’s solicitousness.

Because Crowley _did_ care; he knew that, down to what passed for his bones, hollow as a bird’s, but _not like that._

“C’mere, I’ll get you some water--” and his hands were reaching again, soft and warm on his shoulders as though the blood weren’t always cold.

“You know I don’t need water,” he hissed, “I need you to stop. Just _stop_ this, it’s over.”

“Wha.” Crowley’s lips were thin, but usually carried a twist of sensual suggestion; now they hung slack and dumbfounded. “Wh-- _why?”_

“It’s done, isn’t it?” He gestured to the room, to the people and the release, the reports on television about unions and mines and politics and disease and somehow _this_ as well, this thing they weren’t. “You don’t need me anymore.”

“Yes I do need you!” Crowley half shouted, reaching out a third time, and Aziraphale bolted to his feet at last, straight and true as he could be after so long so far from home. One of the glasses fell from the table, hit the floor, and _bounced_. “I need you awfully! I always have and you know it, so where is this coming from?”

“You can have the rainbow without me.” He looked down, feeling something wretched burn and threaten at the backs of his eyes, his throat. He mastered his impulses, kept calm because one of them had to be. “I’m made to follow, Crawley--but not you, and I need you to unwind from my neck.”

It was a mean thing, a blow that should’ve been beneath him. But his sort (whatever that meant) was meant to strike down demons. It was all the way it was meant to be.

Except for the fact that when Crowley drew back, dark glasses askew from the tussle, it was the worst he’d felt since he’d been sent down from Heaven.

“Sure,” his oldest companion mumbled, straightening up. “See you, then.”

They still had four years, twenty days, and sixteen hours left. But Aziraphale was certain this was what the end would feel like. 

 

* * *

 

 

_Stupid, stupid, goddamn blithering idiot_ , Crowley raged at his steering wheel. At the universe. At Him.

At him.

Never could stop and leave well enough alone. Never could learn to leave his pointy little nose out of trouble. Only asking questions, they’d said, and patted him on the shoulder. Nothing wrong with asking a few questions, is there? Then they’d winked, and he’d beamed, and done his level best to stand tall enough. Just had to keep running his big mouth to Michael of all beings, who smiled what he would later recall as stiffly and  took it to the Metatron, the biggest blessed mouth in the universe.

And here he was still at it, assuming things had finally been alright. As right as they could be, with the End of All Things fast on the horizon. But they were a team, weren’t they? Their own side. What a fucking crock.

He blinked with both sets of lids and hoped that he was still serpent enough not to have tears to shed.

He jabbed half-blind at the buttons of the cassette player, hearing something _new_ at last--but it was just Queen. Just Mercury, this time wailing away about love and immortality like he knew a goddamn thing about it.

“Should’ve known,” he muttered to himself, even though he still didn’t.

Somehow the Bentley made it home without further casualties.

Somehow Crowley made it to bed that night, and more impressively made it out in the morning. That was the real struggle, not giving into his favorite vice and just--sleeping through the End.

The stupid little flag turned up tangled in his sheets weeks later, like a horrid reminder of something he would never have the vastness to understand. Another mistake, another Fall, and he couldn’t even rage at this one because just _look_ at them.

Look at his love, out there tending every little plant in the Ambassador’s garden without a single threat.

He stabbed the chewed plastic pole into the dirt of one of his ficus trees.

It’d been a laugh before, the two of them staring down oblivion while they put on the most patently ridiculous accents they could muster, playing catch with the Antichrist. It was the most monumental thing they’d ever done, but they’d still catch one another’s eyes in private and grin like fools.

Now...now there was nothing to do but stare at the spoiled brat and think, well. _It’d be easy, wouldn’t it. Take care of everything_. He’d think about it, and then he’d pat little Warlock on the head and go about making tea. There was some fearful gulf in his chest that whispered up to him, letting him know that there was evil and then there was Evil, and if he fell down there he’d never see Aziraphale’s face again. Just another member of the enemy Host.

It went on like that, just him and his head, for two months. He made a shit drinking companion, and everyone at the bars where he’d gone to show off insisted on looking at him with a wincing sort of pity. It was supposed to be fun. Shock a few stuffed shirts, do the kind of ingenious little maneuver that took the weight off his chest. He wasn’t quite so vain as to think he’d done it all on his own, of course. Aziraphale had been a help, the pair of them making an unacceptable spectacle just out of reach.

The angel would fuss about it, and then he’d go and order the priciest thing on the menu. Insist on a private box at the opera. If Crowley didn’t know better, he’d have thought Aziraphale had been enjoying it. Well, he’d thought he knew better.

There was still time to go back to bed. He could wake up when it was all over, see if Beelzebub threw him into the depths of the bureaucratic pits. Just…

“What d’you want?” He glowered. The ground had become closer at some point, and they’d lit the lamps. Did they still light them? Come around with little electric zappers, and--

“This is ridiculous.” Ah, this was how it was meant to be. Him down here, looking up at Aziraphale all ringed in halo. It’d be like that again soon.

“You said,” he pointed out.

“I didn’t mean forever!” There was a little muscle in Aziraphale’s soft, round cheek that twitched when he was doing his best not to swear. It was provocative. “You-you’re being frightfully childish, Crowley.”

“You told me off.” He curled into himself, into a little low coil down in the dust, and closed his eyes to the light. “I’m ssssorry.”

It came out thick and confused, because demons didn’t do that. They were like unicorns that way: they didn’t regret.

“Well, just get up and we’ll put you to rights.” Stiff-upper-lip tones, the very kind of thing that made Aziraphale fit so very _well_ here and kept Crowley orbiting. “They’re trying to close, my dear.”

“’Course. They call you?” He came to his knees on the tiled bathroom floor, ran hands back through his curls and set his glasses to rights. All the little fleshy rituals one could employ to avoid intimacies.

“I was--worried.” He sounded bashful, and the hand that patted his shoulder felt as painful as holy fire even through leather. “I haven’t seen you much, these past two months.”

“Hardly a blink.” The sinks were red porcelain, tap handles shaped like little crosses, and there was no hot water for love or money. The mirror showed him his own face, his own silhouette, and he tried not to see the pale-clad form that followed a step behind. “You were right. I’m sorry. Shouldn’t have--presumed.” Cold, cold, pulling the heat from his blood, running down his face like tears he still hadn’t shed and wouldn’t until the day he was run through on a fiery sword by someone he didn’t know well enough to love.

“You seem to be navigating it well enough without me.” And it would have sounded bright, encouraging even, if not for the whole of sixty centuries Crowley’d spent learning every texture of this infuriating creature. “I knew you didn’t really need me about for this. Just a comfort, I suppose.”

“Thas’, that, shit!” He spun around and misjudged it, crashing into Aziraphale’s shoulder. “’Course I need you!”

“I’m not going to abandon these dear people because I got tired of your game, Crowley.” The soft, gentle hand petting his hair did a credit to its divine origins, but there was no time to appreciate it.

“What the He--Hea-- _fuck_ are you talking about?” He should sober up. Being sober was the last thing he wanted.

“It was terrifically amusing for you, clearly, but I didn’t enjoy being a joke.” The soft touch moved to his shoulders, pushing him away. Just like always. Bastard.

_You are a joke. Who wears tweed to a bacchanal?_ He wanted to say. “What joke?” his lips said stupidly.

Proper British decorum, borrowed, made Aziraphale look away. “That you and I are… involved.”

“We are!”

“Not as,” his voice lowered to a whisper, “ _conspirators_. As lovers.”

“We are! Were! I thought. Didn’t you?” Oh, he was going to cry. Big soggy drunk tears, the kind his eyes shouldn’t even be able to leak.

Aziraphale was looking at him. Just staring, like his big brown eyes were going to pop clean out of his sockets. It left time to look at the imperfect lines he’d let worry his brow and the way his mouth trembled, utterly unstiffly.

An urgent pain rose up from Crowley’s stomach, and it seemed impossible to do anything but obey. “’M gonna--” he made it as far as saying before retching onto the tile. His knees quivered. Why had he ever let himself have a stomach?

_For dinners at the Ritz, and crepes. Honeycomb and oysters and unleavened bread. Figs and dates._ The hand he clamped to his mouth trembled, and he could feel his fangs pressing out.

The stinking fluid vanished meanwhile, washed divinely clean, and for that matter the floor wouldn’t need to be mopped tonight by whatever poor sap was doing closing. Angels cleaning up his mess, just what he wanted--

“My dear.” And then Aziraphale was _there,_ pressing close and holding him up against the graffitied wall by the countertop where people snorted cocaine, and his glasses were off his eyes were showing his _teeth_ were showing and yet Aziraphale’s expression was.

He turned his head, not wanting to see what he’d already misunderstood so many times.

“Please let me go, angel. You know I’d do the same for you.”

“You did. But do you really want me to?”

“Not about what I want.” His friend’s skin was so soft, his hair springy, everything about him felt like the home that hadn’t existed since Crowley wriggled just slightly out of line. The smell of him on Crowley’s tongue overwhelmed the sourness of sick.

“What you want matters. Dear--Crowley--I didn’t think it was real. I didn’t know; nobody’s ever…” His cheekbones darkened just slightly, like the perfect golden toast on the top of a fresh-baked roll. “You said it was a game.”

Miracles around him, in him; he could feel them working to banish the horrid fleshy pains, and he wanted to hate it.

He didn’t know how to explain that it had been a game once, except that now he was thinking he’d been deadly serious ever since the words had come out of his mouth and his brain hadn’t taken the time to tell him. Every broken-down wall between them had started as a game, and now they were here. There was no sense saying that he was a damned fool, it was self-evident. He threw himself weak-kneed into his opposite number’s arms, winding his limbs instinctively and squeezing closer, closer; he was halfway to melting, sliding his way under Aziraphale’s ridiculous sweater-vest and hiding there for the next half-decade, when he remembered.

“If you don’t want,” he tried to pull back.

There was a fourth thing about Aziraphale, something most didn’t notice because it would have taken a second glance. His arms were deceptively strong. Maybe it was the books, or memories of a flaming sword. Crowley had more than once snarked that all of Aziraphale’s remaining conviction was in his broad, round biceps. They held Crowley fast now, softening only when he relaxed back against the angel’s chest.

“It’s alright.” In posh, it was practically a wild declaration.

“S’at...all?” He swallowed, ready for whatever he deserved.

“I don’t want to have this conversation in a third-rate lavatory.”

“They redecorated it once,” he mumbled in weak defense of the establishment he’d goaded into repainting orange last summer. Drag-out brawls in the kitchen every Sunday, they had now. He barely noticed he was being lifted.

“It would be much easier if you helped, you know,” Aziraphale puffed. “I’ve overdone on miracles tonight, I’d rather not use one to take you home.”

In defiance of his cold blood, Crowley flushed red. “Yeah,” he managed, “two at once would be overkill.”

“Besides,” Aziraphale said against his temple, “I like when you drive.” The soft huskiness to it dried up the inside of Crowley’s mouth, and he nodded.

“S’pose I’d best sober up, then.”

“I still have that bottle of ’58, you know. Waiting for you.”

“I love you,” he blurted, just before pushing the alcohol out of his system and reaching a state when he might’ve known better.

Aziraphale’s eyes were still shining, the light fixture still forming a halo.

“My dear, you mean the world to me.”

One hand to each of his cheeks, the gentle press of lips was a benediction.


End file.
